Data Recovery on *Dead* hard drive

[LeetestUnleet]

Cliff Notes: Dead hard drive, it doesn't spin up, recommend a data recovery specialist.

Story: So I get home at 12:30 this afternoon after taking a final, and my computer has bluescreened in the 3 hours I was gone. No big deal; it's Windows, this happens all the time. I reboot. My computer doesn't see the drive. I open it up and check the cables - one felt a little loose, but it shouldn't have been enough to not detect the drive. I turn it back on, and it sees the drive, but hangs when it attempts to boot Windows. The drive makes a funny noise, so I kill the power immediately. I let the drive cool down (they tend to get hot) and power it back up. Nothing. I touch the drive, and I don't even feel the vibration from spinning platters. My other drive, the one I use for storage, works just fine on the same cables.

So now my main hard drive is completely dead. I *think* the platters seized or something. There's a lot of data on there I'd just as soon have back like web design/development and other programming projects, as well as all my documents concerning school, personal stuff, etc. I'm seriously considering sending it off to one of the many data recovery specialists, but I don't know where to start. Has anyone actually dealt with them before? What were your experiences, and what companies do you recommend? I want to keep the price as low as possible, but the data I lost is worth a few hundred dollars that I don't really want to start from scratch on.

Oh, and yes, I'm a moron and didn't have backups. I know I should have but I didn't think my drive would spontaneously die in less than 3 hours when it was working perfectly fine in the morning. I've never had a hard drive halt up so quickly before where I couldn't even ATTEMPT a data recovery.

 

[bendixG15]

Try the freezer thingy
anything else costs money.

 

[Green Man]

Take the drive out of the case and turn it on its side. If that doesn't work, turn it on the other side. Try upside down. If all else fails, a sharp rap with a screw driver will sometimes get them to spin.

 

[DaiShan]

http://www.drivesavers.com/ - google is your friend

On a side note my parent's hard drive died this weekend and I was able to restore most of the data from backups that I made, but I was about 2 months behind. I got a call from my dad today asking which hard drive was dead because my mom told someone that works for her that she lost some important data, and they told her to bring it in and they would get the data off. I'm kind of skeptical because it takes a lot of specialty hard ware to do true data recovery, but she does manage the data centers for the state, so I dunno. It would definitely help me out since my completed (but not filed) tax return is on that disk heh

 

[RebateMonger]

The longest-existing recovery company that I know of is Ontrack.com. They've been around as long as I've been working with PCs, which is a LONG time. I've never heard anything bad about them. I'd suggest talking to them, at least.

I'd strongly suggest NOT taking the drive to the "guy down the street" for repairs like this. A botched repair job will make recovery MUCH more expensive, or impossible.